Mary looms large in our theology, our liturgy, our confessions and creeds.
A parishioner recently asked me, “I noticed that each week you mention Mary during the service. Could you explain why?” What caught his ear was the Virgin Mary being mentioned not only weekly but more than once during the Divine Service. Was this a nod to the Roman Catholic Church or was there something truly catholic about these references? The following constitutes my response.
- The Virgin Mary is named within the Christological article (“second article”) in the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds, which we confess immediately after the sermon: “who was born of the Virgin Mary.” The Athanasian Creed, also confessed in our churches, includes a reference to the Son of God “born from the substance of His mother [Mary] in this age.” Her inclusion in the foundational, ecumenical creeds of Christianity were and remain intended to safeguard against a host of aberrant beliefs about the incarnation of the Son of God, especially the heretical teachings of Arianism, Gnosticism, and Manichaeism. Each of these ancient sects diminished or denied some fact about the Eternal Logos (God the Son) taking on the totality of humanity — body and soul. Variants of those heresies circulate today, especially Gnosticism and Docetism in which it is believed that God only “seemed” to take on human flesh and therefore negates the reality of the human body of Jesus as resurrected and glorified. Christians cannot confess a biblical doctrine of Christ without teaching and confessing Mary in the creeds, for she anchors the Son of God in humanity by providing the substance of his humanity.
- Because of its more comprehensive statement about the Incarnation, the Nicene Creed is confessed at every Divine Service, since Holy Communion itself instantiates the once-crucified, now-resurrected body and blood of that same Jesus who “for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary.” The Nicene Creed is the creed of Holy Communion, with Mary linking the ever-incarnate one, Jesus, to both miracles, namely God on Earth and God as Eucharist. Since good preaching brings Christian ears from the real voice of Christ to his true bodily presence, sermonizing the implications of the incarnation by way of the Virgin Mary also gives rise to regular occasions to speak of her role in God’s great act of redemption.
- From the time of the early Church Fathers through the classic Medieval period, theologians argued from Scripture that Mary represents the Church. Mary, boasts of “God my Savior” in the Magnificat, in the same way that the Church does. As she is the recipient of grace and called “blessed,” so is the Church. Indeed, as she had Christ Jesus inside her and union with the Son of God, so does the Church. The event of John 19:25-29 in which Jesus seems to transfer Mary’s motherhood to John (representing the disciples of the Lord) was seen as reason for these theologians to believe that Mary’s role had changed, too. Jesus didn’t need a mother in his victorious and glorified state, but with her being the first Christian, she takes on the symbolic status of the Church, the Bride of Christ herself. This thinking prompted the revered third century theologian, St. Cyprian, to write: “No one can have God for his Father who has not the Church for his mother.” It should be no surprise, then, that Christian art late into the fourteenth century frequently depicted Mary wearing a wedding band when holding Jesus. It did not represent her matrimony to St Joseph, but was emblematic of the Church as the Bride of Christ. To speak of Holy Mary, then, was to speak of the Holy Church — both militant and glorified. So the glorious things said about Mary were actually statements about the Church and its ongoing role in dispensing Christ’s salvation and care for the baptized.
- By the very inspiration and revelation of the Holy Spirit of God, Mary herself gives us words of Scripture saying, “all generations will call me blessed” because of what God, her Savior, did for her and to her during the Incarnation and rearing Jesus at her breasts (Luke 1:46-55). In mentioning Mary, “the Mother of God” (her actual title from the Council of Niceae, Theotokos, which Lutherans believe, teach, and confess as truth about Mary), we are in step with Holy Scripture and the will of God (1) to call her “blessed” and acknowledge her vital and essential role in (2) the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, but also (3) her connecting the Son of God to the rest of humanity — us; for Mary, like all of humanity, had a human father and mother. Jesus did not. He only had a human mother. Therefore, Jesus’s representation of humanity runs through the Theotokos, Mary. He is truly Jewish on account of her. Thus the Virgin Mary, as the church catholic believes, teaches, and confesses, represents us. Even her purity plays a typological role in this regard. If we don't rightly understand this, then we don't rightly understand either the Incarnation or our redemption.
- Mary provides one example of a woman in God’s redemptive history. Mary entered matrimony; Mary was faithful to her God and husband; Mary was pregnant; Mary birthed; Mary reared Jesus; Mary mothered. Women and girls can look to Mary as an iconic Christian who was faithful to her God, her husband, and to the God-given vocations of wife and mother. When no icon, image, or song about Mary ever happens amidst the gathered Church, this example is lost.
- Mary’s relationship to Scripture is another good reason to speak of her during the Divine Service. Consider how remarkable it is that St. Joseph, Jesus’s guardian, says not a single word in Scripture, but there are four significant portions of the Holy Word of God that are spoken by the Lord’s instrument, Mary: Luke 1:34, 38; 46-55; 2:48; and John 2:3, 5. Plus she is mentioned by name 19 times; appears in the narrative of 129 New Testament verses; and has 17 different titles in Scripture. This is to say little about the numerous Old Testament prophesies directly related to Mary, such as Genesis 3:15; Psalm 22:9-10; Isaiah 7:14; Jeremiah 31:22; and Micah 5:2-3, to name but a few. Through these referents she, and she alone, is uniquely present for the conception, birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ Jesus — testifying to all, substantiating Luke’s Gospel, and emboldening the Apostolic witness.
- This overwhelming biblical witness undergirds why there are four Marian Feasts during the Church calendar (The Annunciation, The Visitation, The Purification of Mary and the Presentation of our Lord (also known as Candlemas), and of course the Feast of Saint Mary (15 August), excluding her unavoidable role during Advent and Christmas! In other words, there are no less than twelve weeks during the year where she features in the lectionary and Liturgical Calendar. In other words, Mary looms large in our theology, our liturgy, our confessions and creeds. Without mentioning her, we run the risk of slipping into anti-marian beliefs and customs, with implications upon Christology. Our Liturgy isn’t an indifferent thing, a mere consumer choice. Rather, all of these feasts are there to safeguard the dictum that “all theology is Christology.” Our Lutheran forefathers clearly understood that the way we worship determines what we believe (Lex ordani, lex credendi). Purge Mary from the Divine Service and one inevitable effaces the doctrines of Christ, the Church, and the Sacraments. This is why her song, the Magnificat appears in five variations within the Lutheran Service Book, and more than sixty(!) hymns that include Mary by name or her essential role in God’s work of redemption. Our inherited liturgy has not been devoid of Mary.
Where Mary is absent from the conscience, confession, and customs of the Church, are those places where competing ideologies and theologies have displaced thoroughgoing Christological preaching and Eucharist encounters with the ever-Incarnate One. This is because the biblical Mary, both as the Mother of God and emblematic of the Church, always, always directs us to the Savior, Jesus, saying “Do whatever He tells you” (John 2:5).
Mary matters vitally if we are going to conceive of Jesus correctly, but also understand our own salvation and how Christ gives himself to us today. If hearing about Mary is new to you, then I hope this opens a door to appreciating Saint Mary as a member of our church family because she was the first Christian, the first redeemed person, the first one cleansed by Jesus's blood, and the only biblical witness to all the major events of the life of Jesus our Savior.
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